A Week in the Life
by Jessa L'Rynn
Summary: A week in the life of one Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth. As a chain of circumstances comes to the end, it also comes back to the beginning. I don't own Doctor Who, but it isn't for want of trying.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Thursday

On a Thursday morning, Rose Tyler was annoyed by a troop of purple aliens stomping into her office demanding scones. They also wanted some crickets, but she suspected they were confused.

For some twenty minutes, she tried to explain that Cricket was in fact a game and not something you could eat, but she gave up, rummaged through her desk drawer, pulled out her phone and a small white bag and called Mickey to get her some crickets from wherever you went to get live bait in north London. Then she offered the bag across the desk to them, explaining it was a sugar and starch product and they should only eat it if they could metabolize such a thing.

"Bloody hell!" the taller of the two exclaimed. "This is really good!"

She wasn't surprised to hear such words from an alien anymore. She had perfected the Universal Translator some time six months ago, even though no one knew how she'd pulled such a thing off. Rose would be damned if she told them they needed to include her on the list of people who couldn't figure that one out.

"Now what can I do for you folks today?" she asked. She'd refrained from using "ladies" or "gentlemen" after the confusion this question had caused to the asexual Horridens, who'd stood in her office and debated for six hours before deciding they'd be gentlemen unless it was raining.

"We are Navareenos. We demand 1950."

"Do I look like a bleeding Time Lord to you?" she demanded crossly. She expected them to simply look as sheepish as their physiology allowed and go find a Time Travel Agent or something.

Instead they took her at her word and studied her eyes. Then, the color leeched out of them (which turned them a pasty lavender color) and they started apologizing profusely.

Rose had no idea what they were on about, but they seemed in a huge hurry to leave all of the sudden, so she gave them her Buddy Holly and the Crickets CD and sent them on their way.

"That was weird," she told Mickey, when he arrived with a small cage full of tiny, chirping insects.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Friday

On Friday afternoon, the Scintillions invaded. No one could actually tell at first, because they looked for all the world like an unseasonable weather pattern. Four hundred million three-inch snowflakes stormed Downing Street and had the President cornered when Rose, Jake, and Mickey burst into the room with flame throwers demanding a parlay with their leader.

The translator and conference was set up on Mickey's laptop and the President tried to secure a list of demands from the leader. It went to hell in a bucket immediately when they started a shouting fest across the screen at each other.

Rose stepped in at last when they'd resorted to literal name-calling, trying not to laugh at the idea of a major world leader arguing politics with an oversized snowball. "By the authority vested in me" (she'd made that up) "I order you to leave this solar system immediately and not return."

"And who are you, pink and yellow thing?"

That hurt. She squared her shoulders and stared into the camera, letting her eyes show how angry she was, as she'd seen the Doctor do a thousand times or more. "I am Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth." She'd just thrown that in. The Doctor had used it, and it sounded good, so why not?

The snowball started to look quite fuzzy on the edges. "We had no idea such an arrangement had been issued. Our apologies, Rose Tyler." And the snow flakes had all disappeared in a vivid blue light.

"They're leaving the system," said Jake, who was tracking them on the other computer. "Past Marsian orbit now. Past Jupiter. Bugger, they can move, can't they?"

"Seriously," said Mickey in awe.

"Past Pluto, and… gone. They've crossed the Oort cloud, they've headed back into deep space. What the hell was that?"

"Scintillions," Rose replied, abruptly morose. She really did look all pink and yellow to aliens. Just what she needed to know at a time like this.

"No," said Jake as Mickey tried to kick his ankle, "I meant the other bit. Ow!"

Mickey got him finally and shook his head firmly. They went back to work and nothing more was said.

* * *

On Friday night, Rose got drunk and passed out in her bed, dreaming of Time Lords and TARDISes and a golden light that sang her lullabies. 


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Saturday

On Saturday, she had a hang-over, so when Rasdajn, the annoying Time Agent who reminded her of all of Jack's bad qualities (and none of his redeeming ones) turned up with a present and a bundle of flowers, she was in next to no mood to put up with him. "Time Lords," she demanded as she climbed out of bed and staggered around looking for clothes. "Tell me what you know."

"Good morning, Ras," he mocked in his gravelly bass. "And how are you, and oooh, thank you for bringing me the flowers, I shall reward you with a little kiss."

She turned the same glare on him that she had used on the Scintillions, only with the addition of the hung-over basilisk growl. He stepped back and, before she could point a finger at him, he ducked out. "I'll just wait in the den," he said in a low soprano squeak. "'Til you're… erm… feeling better."

"Right," she grumbled as she slammed the door behind him. "That won't be 'til I'm dead, but I'll come talk to you when I feel sane."

A shower, some clean clothes, and two Tylenol later, she finally felt up to being flirted with by an ugly man with a sulky attitude and a tendency to hold things over her head. "So, tell me what you know."

"I brought you a present. It's that sonic screwdriver you were talking about last time I was here. I'm not supposed to give it to you."

She took the box anyway and dared him to take it back. "Talk, Ras," she insisted, and dunked the flowers into a vase for the stand by the doorway. They'd come from New Earth, she could tell, and they smelled like apples and time travel much more than the lilies of the field.

"They're a myth, a legend. No one believes they ever existed. No one's ever met one or heard of one, but there are old, old planets out there where the people claim to have dealt with them regularly in their early histories."

"Oh," she said. "But there aren't any? What's in the constellation of Kasterborous?"

"Can you try for something more specific? It's mostly space gas and rocks out there."

She wracked her brain. She knew this. The TARDIS had shown her once, maybe? "Galactic Coordinates 10-0-11-0-0 by 0-2 from center. I think?"

He checked the computer on his wrist, tapping a few buttons. "Black hole. Big black hole. Weird black hole, too, come to think of it."

"Why?"

"There's a star caught in the event horizon. Not doing anything, no gases, no x-rays, nothing. The event horizon, by the way is…"

"I know what it is," Rose replied testily.

"Sorry," said Ras. "It's just last time I was here, I was watching this program on the tele, right. And there were a bunch of astrophysicists nattering on and on about how shocked and surprised they were that galaxies had black holes in the center. Like, what else could a super-star cradle have, right?"

"They haven't made the connection between macro and micro yet," she said with a sigh. "Don't worry about it. They're getting there."

"You sure?"

"You're here, you're at least part human, yeah, I'm sure. It's probably complicated. Some day soon someone's going to point out that exploded star dust makes baby stars to them and they'll make the connection and who knows where it will go from there."

"Who told you all this stuff?"

"A man I knew once… or twice. Whatever. I'm going back to bed."

"Sorry."

"No, don't bother. Just… thanks."

"No prob, sweetie."

"And don't call me that."

And she went into her room, laid down on her bed, and thought about Time Lords and Captain Jack Harkness and planets that were impossible and appropriately named "Hell."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Sunday

When the Arvadans captured Pete and Mickey and held them hostage on Sunday, she wasn't surprised. It was just that kind of week. She took her sonic screwdriver and played with it and the teleporter in the Ghost Room until she found the frequency she wanted and popped into existence aboard the space ship.

They captured her immediately, of course, but she had been expecting that. What she wasn't expecting was to be stripped to her skivvies and dragged into their presence. She was glad she'd thought to stow the screwdriver out of sight because she didn't have the parts to make another one and wasn't sure she'd be able to get it back.

"Mum says hi," she told Pete, to cover her embarrassment of standing in her pink bra and boxers in the presence of her ex-boyfriend and not-quite father.

Mickey gaped at her stupidly. "Right," she announced, squared her shoulders, and pinned the largest Arvadan with a grin. "What're you thinking of, turning up here?"

"We need a resource only this planet can provide. We will take this world and all the people and you will give us this resource immediately."

"Not a chance," said Rose. "We're human beings, we don't come quietly. What do you want, maybe we can work out a trade?"

"You are not a human being," they told her.

"Right," she agreed, thinking "What the hell?" as Mickey and Pete stared at her. "But they are and I'm telling you, you're better off dealing with me.

"What are you?"

"None of yer damn business, now why don't you talk?"

The largest Arvadan stalked toward her and grabbed her roughly by the shoulder. Rose bent her knees and clapped her hand over the Arvandan appendage. Then she stooped forward, slapped her other hand under his and flung him over her back and into the nearest bulkhead.

He landed with a squishy thud and groaned. The others all raced toward him while Rose stood and dusted her hands off like Han Solo. "How the hell did you do that?" Mickey demanded in a choked whisper.

"Simple really," she said, and spouted forth a brief tirade about relative gravity on Arvadan vessels, weight coefficients, vectors, Venusian akido, and the second law of physics.

"Er… what?" said Pete, scratching his head and looking anywhere but right at her.

She tilted her head, thoroughly confused. "I used him for a fulcrum," she said.

"Oh," Mickey said, and stole their jackets from the unguarded pile off to the left.

"Thanks," she said as she pulled it on and turned to the aliens. "Well?" she demanded. "He'll live, we have things to talk about."

"We will release the hostages," said a small, fussy looking Arvadan who only needed a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles to complete his image as an accountant. "You have conquered our leader."

"But what will we do for the heptoperinamite?" asked one of the others, plaintively.

"You need rag weed?" Rose exclaimed. "Good grief, why didn't you say so? How much?"

"Ten small plants would be enough for us to clone and cultivate our own," the accountant said, checking what looked exactly like a clipboard. "The plague wiped out all the viable plants on our world. We haven't been able to find another plant that produced it anywhere. But all our tests show that your strains will produce twice as much, plus be plague resistant."

"Yeah, it's pretty much like a plant cockroach," she agreed. "Gimme a second, I'll get you some."

She pulled her phone from her coat, ran the sonic screwdriver over it a few seconds until she was marginally satisfied with the results, and dialed. "Sorry about this, Pete," she said while she waited. "I don't think there'll be any roaming charges, but if there are, let me know."

"No problem," he said faintly and he and Mickey went back to whispering.

"Jake," Rose said, "I'm up on the spaceship with Dad and Mickey and I think we've come to an understanding. I just need you to get me some ragweed." She listened as he demanded to know what ragweed had to do with anything. "Just get about twenty plants and all the seed heads you can find." He shouted that she wasn't making any sense, so she called him a stupid ape, told him to follow orders, and hung up.

"Well, that's settled," she told the accountant alien while several of the others bundled her vanquished foe off to medical. "We'll get that stuff up to you within the hour and then I'll ask you to just bugger off or something, ok?"

"We'll be gone once we have it," the accountant alien promised.

"Good," she said and picked up all their clothes from the side table. "Now, just a bit of jiggery pokery…" she muttered, fiddled with the screwdriver for a bit more, and then pointed it at the control panel at the front of the room. "Just need to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow."

Abruptly, the teleport beam swept over the three of them and they were back on planet Earth. Rose had just enough presence of mind to ask Mickey to make sure Jake did exactly as she asked. He nodded, and took her hand, and the world went buzzy and black.

* * *

As she slept, she dreamed. As she dreamed, she remembered. She was standing next to the TARDIS console. Mickey and her mum were outside, working to help her break into the Heart of the TARDIS. As soon as it opened, she knew what she had to do. The Heart would grant wishes, she knew that. So she had to wish that she could save the Doctor, wish that she could save him so that she could keep her promise and be with him forever. But the ship was being so stubborn. He wanted her, the Time Ship, to stay behind, keep Rose there, die. So that was what the TARDIS was going to do. Neither could give up without a fight. Then, all at once, it had worked. The console had flown open and she… 

"_I create myself,"_ she murmured. _"I take the words and I scatter them…"_ And throughout time and space, two words flowed.

"_I want you safe. My Doctor…"_ And she loved him so much in that instant that any half-formed possibilities without him in them collapsed.

"_You are tiny… every atom of your existence, and I divide them…" _And the Daleks and all they represented crumbled to dust.

"_I bring life…"_ And somewhere, a very special dead man breathed – forever.

"_My head… it's killing me…"_

Then there was his voice. Tender, loving, brilliant, Northern (lots of planets have a North)… _"I think you need a Doctor."_

Then, there were more voices, and many changes, and so many things went wrong.

"_You burned like the sun…"_ a werewolf, a mad host.

"_No, not you…"_ the Doctor, again, his new voice so strained, so cold. _"You can spend the rest of your life with me, but I can't spend the rest of my life with you."_ **Alone, alone, alone, alone…**

"_The valiant child who will die in battle, so very soon…"_ a demon, source and soul of darkness.

"_A storm's coming…"_ words practically torn from him, reluctant, yet merciless.

Her voice again. _"You're stuck with me…"_ Only, he wasn't, after all.

"_I looked into the TARDIS, and the TARDIS looked into me…"_

* * *

"It was like she was channeling _him_, or something." 

Mickey's panicky, angry voice was the first thing she became aware of as she woke. She stayed quiet, and kept her eyes closed, because they never talked about the Doctor in front of her, if they could help it.

"Nothing on the scan, though?" Pete asked.

"Just shows exposure to some sort of harmless radiation. Nothing to worry about, no signs at all that she's anything but human."

"We won't have the blood work back until Wednesday," said Pete with an exasperated sigh.

"What did that mad alien do to my baby?" demanded Jackie Tyler. If anger had been any sort of motive force, Rose would have opened her eyes to find the Doctor there, because her mum's fury would have summoned him there in order to strangle him.

"He didn't do anything to me," she said, softly. "I did it to myself."

"What?" demanded Mickey.

It was gone now, whatever it was, and she couldn't understand what she had been thinking. "I… I don't know." She took a quick inventory and found herself in a bed in the Torchwood Infirmary. "What happened?"

"You fell down, Sweetheart," Jackie said, kindly. "Are you feeling all right?"

"My head hurts," she replied.

Jackie handed her a cup from the bedside table with two aspirin in it. "Better not," she said. "Got any Tylenol?"

Jackie offered her two from her purse, so she took them with a cup of water Mickey poured for her. "What else have they given me?" she demanded once she'd done this.

"Nothing," Mickey assured her. "I wouldn't let them. The aliens said that you weren't human, so I didn't know…"

"Not human?" she demanded. "That's ridiculous." She laid back on the pillows and sighed. "It's been two hours, are they gone?"

"How'd you know that?" Pete asked her. "There isn't a clock in this room anywhere."

She frowned. "They are gone, aren't they, Mickey?"

"Yes," he promised. "Gone as they can be."

* * *

On Sunday night, Pete Tyler, President of Torchwood, had a plaque reading "Defender of the Earth" nailed to her door just below her name plate.

* * *

Also on Sunday night, Rose slept in her own bed again, and dreamed of light and music and words in a language she knew but couldn't remember. 


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Monday

At five o'clock in the morning, on Monday, two groups of aliens arrived and demanded to speak to Rose Tyler. She was shaken awake by Jake, who seemed to be mad at her for some reason and, because she'd rather have been asleep, she grumbled at him. "What in the name of Rassilon do you want?" she asked.

"Come join the rest of the stupid apes, Rose, your reputation has preceded you."

"Where'd you hear that phrase?" she asked.

"You said it to me, yesterday, remember?"

She stared at him blankly, wondering if maybe she was still dreaming. "Did I? That was a terrible thing to say, Jake. I'm so sorry!"

Jake blinked in surprise. "Oh. Oh, good, I…"

"No, trust me, it's an awful thing to say. If I ever say it again, please feel free to remind me that your IQ is pushing 160 and for a human, that's impressive."

"Right. How 'bout you don't say it again and we'll call it pax, yeah?"

"No prob," she agreed with a smile. "So what've we got?"

"Two bunches of aliens – or maybe they're factions of one bunch? And they want you to mediate, since Earth is neutral."

"Great," she grumbled. "Just fantastic."

* * *

They held negotiations at Torchwood Tower because Pete thought Rose probably shouldn't be off planet again any time soon if it could at all be avoided. When she found out the aliens were Tasins, she ordered a triangular table be painted blue and put into the large round conference room. She could just imagine what her mum would say about the blue table and the red carpet, but it would have to do, since there wasn't time to get an orange carpet (which would, admittedly, have been worse). 

She couldn't remember ever having met any Tasins in her travels, but she knew exactly what she needed. She had her team dress-up in long blue tunics with white trousers (which Jake complained about vociferously) and armed with small, bright knives (which stopped the complaining.) Then she lined them up on either side of the corridor and stood in the center with a large ceremonial sword she had borrowed from Pete's house.

The two parties' carefully timed arrival was simultaneous. They brought entire contingents, armed to the teeth (literally, as they had more teeth than a great white shark) and looking rather alarming for all that they were only four foot high. "Welcome to Earth. I am Rose Tyler, and I'll try to help you in every way I can." Then she took the sword and dropped it to the floor.

The two leaders also drew and dropped their swords. As mediator, she immediately collected them and had Pete stow them in her office. They entered the conference room, the two leaders shoulder to shoulder while Rose rolled her eyes and followed them. They each selected the ceremonially correct sides of the table and then their separate entourages entered. At a signal from Rose, all the daggers in the room were drawn and dropped into the middle of the table.

She took the refreshments from a side table, tasted from each and every flask and goblet and then poured out measures for each of them. Mickey's note appeared on her screen, "This is worse than peace talks with the UN." She nodded at him and then turned to her guests.

"Well, you came to talk," she said flippantly. "So talk."

And so they did, for two hours, while Mickey made copious notes behind her and Rose absorbed every word said. The sheer effort expended in not rolling her eyes was enormous. They were arguing, apparently, over a small, useless planetoid in between their two planets. It had no wealth, it had no resources or people. It didn't even have a tactical advantage because it was too unstable to build anything like a base on it.

Finally, Rose had had enough. So she said so, loud and clear. "Allow me to offer you a quote, gentlemen, from the greatest writer this world has ever known. 'Witness this army of such mass and charge/ …Exposing what is mortal and unsure/ To all that fortune, death and danger dare,/ Even for an egg-shell.' He also said 'We go to gain a little patch of ground/ that hath no profit in it but the name'."

They both looked at her as if she were mad. She wondered, briefly, if they were right, and if it mattered even if she were.

"You can, if you wish, summon all your armies and fight and die, but if you do, what will you get for your trouble? The blood of your brothers and the blood of your sons will be on your head and on your hands, and never a moment of peace, or quiet or trust. And suppose you win? What good will it do you? The planet isn't worth the empty space it hangs in, is it? How can it be so precious that it must be bought in lives? How can the barren soil there be so valuable that it must be watered in blood?" She felt very strongly about this topic, anyway, so the words came from her lips in an elegiac diatribe of compassionate sorrow. "You'll have let them die, you who are summoned to lead and to guide them. You'll have made them die, you'll have killed them with your own words. And for what?" She rose to her feet and glared down at them, hearing singing in her head as she spoke. "There's very little worth that, and this… you'll become murderers of your own people over a charred lump of rubble. Is that what you want?"

The two looked at each other, their mouths parted, a sign of grief in their species. "No," the one on her right said, while the one on her left shook his flipper in the air, their gesture of 'no'. He was, to judge from his body language, literally too ashamed to speak.

"Then let it lie. Call it common ground, or neutral territory. Call it off-limits, if you must, but forget it. It will never do you any good to have it."

"But what if…?"

"If in the future it has treasures you can use that you can't use now?" She smiled. "Then renegotiate. Agree here and now to renegotiate if it ever comes to that. Of course, it's unlikely to come to that, so maybe by the time it does, you'll have such a permanent peace between you that you can exploit it jointly."

The negotiations after that took seven more minutes to resolve. Rose typed up a resolution in Galacti-speak and had them sign it, then signed it herself and made Mickey and Pete sign as witnesses. Then she made them each a copy and sent the original to her office. "I'll have this," she promised. "If I hear that you did not honor this, there will be problems. Do you understand?"

"We do," they agreed before they teleported away.

The President of the United Kingdom asked if he could borrow her speech next time he had to deal with certain factions from the Middle East.

* * *

At noon, she noticed her TARDIS key glowing as it hung around her neck. She took it off and studied it, wondering if was heavier like it felt, and stared at it until Mickey came and got her for lunch. 

When lunch was over, she pulled the key out again and looked at it and smiled to herself. "It takes two hundred years to grow a TARDIS," she told Mickey.

She failed to notice his concerned glance or his dark face lined with worry.

* * *

At 3:30 that same afternoon, someone dumped half-a-dozen tribbles into a local Tesco. Rose and Mickey went to get the silly little things, both of them astounded that such ridiculous creatures actually existed. There were over four hundred tribbles in the store by the time they got there, but sadly all but two of them were dead. As nearly as Rose could tell, they were allergic to the lift music playing on the store speakers. 

Jake locked them up in a small cage with the huge note "Do not feed" attached to them.

* * *

At midnight, Rose was still up doing paperwork when a troupe of creatures who looked letter-perfect like elves straight out of Tolkien turned up and asked for the tribbles back. The creatures had apparently been dropped there by mistake and were meant to be a prank on someone in Alpha Centauri, not Earth's system. 

She gave them back, both of them, and suggested they play pranks when she wasn't at work.

* * *

When she slept, she dreamed of legends, whispered in her mind, stories of a world she could have known and never would. She dreamed of a life so alien and so familiar that it ached and burned inside her. She dreamed of fire in her blood and light in her eyes and time standing still all around her. 

She dreamed of a man who was not a man, who she would ever want and never have, and a wish she once made to be with him forever.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Tuesday

The sound that woke her was again raised voices. Mickey, Pete, and her mum were arguing in the kitchen. Rose tsked to herself and went to eavesdrop on them. It wasn't good for her mother to get angry or get her blood pressure up, not this late in her pregnancy.

"I just want her safe," Jackie shouted.

_I want you safe, My Doctor._

"D'you think I don't know my own daughter?"

"Look, Jacks, I'm not saying you don't know your daughter," said Pete. "What I'm saying is that Mickey was there when she was traveling with _him_, so he'd know if this was going on."

"It was, Jackie, I'm sorry," Mickey assured her. "Rose has been changing ever since _he_ did, it has to have had something to do with looking into the ship."

_I looked into the TARDIS and the TARDIS looked into me._

"I remember," she told the wall, which ignored her.

The time wasn't right yet, but she knew…

"Look, remember how she felt him in her head before Bad Wolf Bay?" Mickey asked. "And she fixed the translator? And those aliens that came last month, took one look at her, and ran, and the ones the month before that? And that time she took apart the power generator and put it back together with duct tape and god only knows what, just in the nick of time? She remembers everything she sees now, too. Know what she told me yesterday about Ted in the mailroom?"

"No, what?" asked Pete, curious and concerned at the same time.

"She said he's got to keep his job, because his home life is a big problem, and she wished she could help him, but he had something important to do later. How would the old Rose know any of that?"

How, indeed, wondered Rose. She knew she had always been tough, inspired, creative, stubborn. Being with the Doctor always changed you, always, and none moreso than Rose Tyler of the council estates, London. Rose, the shop girl who saved his life, Rose the companion who stood between him and a Dalek, only to finish the Dalek off herself, Rose the power that had ended the Time War, Rose the valiant child…

But she didn't die in that battle, because she had already begun to change.

* * *

At 10:30 on Tuesday, she and Mickey went out to the park for their morning break Rose asked him about the argument, but he wasn't ready to confront her, not really. She prodded at him and pried and almost had an answer when something strange and horrific popped out of the trees at them.

"Not good," Rose said, in typical Rose Tyler understatement.

"No kidding," said Mickey. "What do we do?"

Rose grabbed his hand, fitting it just so into hers. "Run!" she shouted.

They pelted through the trees, dashing madly into clearings and then racing through them while the thing with enormous horns had to navigate them more carefully. They darted past the play park and then deeper into the little wooded area to draw the creature away from the park.

Unfortunately, this didn't work. They stopped running when the sounds of pursuit changed into the sounds of tiny people screaming. Rose looked back, her face white, and started shrieking herself. "That'll draw it off," she said, and she was right, because it turned around, its white eyes hollow and terrifying, and darted toward them.

"It's coming this way!" Mickey shouted.

"Yeah, not a good thing," Rose agreed, the understatement again, and gazed around her. "Trees," she ordered and started climbing.

Mickey jumped up and clung to a branch, while Rose clambered up next to him. Meanwhile, the horned beast chased toward them like a steam engine, huge, unstoppable, and implacable. Mickey reached his branch and dragged Rose up, then took another branch and pulled himself up into a sitting position. Rose jumped and vaulted onto it, glad once again of the gymnastics training.

They were several feet above the thing's head, feet dangling precariously and Mickey trying to get a signal on her phone to get someone to come and corral the thing when a dark, organ pipe sound shot from a nearby clearing and the beast shrieked horribly.

Then, it collapsed. Rose looked at Mickey in concern, then dropped from her branch and landed beside the thing in a ready stance. There was a whispery, rustling sound like applause heard from far away in the bushes to their right, but she ignored it for a moment.

She put a hand to its face. "Dead," she informed him, and he clambered down as well. "It's a Malturis, non-sentient, aggressive, kinda like a bull. Even related to bovines, really, except it eats meat. But how did it get here?"

"You seem remarkably well informed," said a whispery, papery voice from the bushes.

"Come out where I can see you, please," Rose ordered. When three tall, slender, blue men, who looked like people evolved from gazelles, slipped soundlessly from the undergrowth, Rose shook her head in disgust. "Navarad Hunters," she said grimly. "I should have known. And how did your quarry get here?"

"It escaped," said the Hunter, and even Mickey could tell it was trying for innocence.

"They always do," she replied, and now her disgust was plain. "You didn't think it could kill somebody, did you?" she demanded now, her voice quiet and dangerous.

Mickey felt like he had around the Doctor, the sense of a storm in all its glory and terror brewing on the horizon. Only it wasn't on the horizon. It was standing next to him, blazing through the girl he once knew, burning like stars in her suddenly, incredibly golden eyes.

"Who are you?" the apparent leader demanded.

"I'm Rose Tyler," she said. "This is Mickey, my companion."

Mickey briefly looked at her as if she'd lost her mind, but let it go on the grounds he was certain she had and didn't care.

"It had been eons since the Navarad hunted your kind, Rose Tyler. We thought you were no more."

"You know why you don't hunt my kind, though, don't you?" she said, dangerously. "Because we hunt you back. This is the only warning you're going to get. Leave this world and never return."

"Oh, no," the leader said, delighted, whispery laughter in his voice and in his face. "Run, Rose Tyler, run and don't look back."

He lifted the gun looking thing and Rose grabbed Mickey's hand. They turned and dashed away, running full pelt through the trees back toward the Torchwood Tower. "This is insane," Mickey shouted.

"No kidding," Rose replied as a bolt of energy sailed over her left shoulder. "They're damn good shots."

"Why are we leading them back to Torchwood, then?" Mickey asked.

Rose stopped running and grinned at him, wildly. "Mickey Smith, you're a genius," she proclaimed ecstatically, and turned and dragged him off down the street.

They darted through a crowded intersection and then Rose hailed a cab. Mickey turned to look and saw the three hunters were only a hundred yards or so behind them.

"They don't run very fast," Rose explained as they bundled into the cab, "and they can't shoot by-standers. They can let them get killed by the quarry, that doesn't matter to them, but they have rules. We stay in crowds or keep well away from them, and they can't get us. No extraordinary measures are allowed. Not even for chasing me." She sighed and raked her fingers through her thick blond hair. "Take us to Cardiff," she told the cabbie. "And step on it."

"Rose," Mickey said, "what's happening to you?"

"I'm changing," she told him. "I was always changing. It's just…" She sighed. "Remember last month when those things held me captive in space for a week?"

"Yeah," he said, nervously. "Did they do something to you?"

"No, no, no, no, no." She took his hand. "It's just free space radiation accelerates it. I've always been changing…" she sighed. "Look, I promise I'll explain all this later. We need to get to Torchwood, Cardiff. Can you call Tosh and let her know we're on the way? Oh, and call London and get them to send a strike force to comb those woods."

Mickey placed the call as directed to Cardiff, letting them know that he, Rose Tyler, and a gang of alien hunters were coming. "And don't let Gwen out of the building," Rose added, which Mickey relayed with all the firm authority he didn't feel, exactly as if he knew what he was talking about.

"Why not?" he asked as he hung up.

"She's an anomaly; they'll want her almost as much as they want me."

"Ok, what do you want me to tell Pete and Jake?"

"They're looking for a spaceship, about 10 meters long, 10 meters wide, streamlined, heavily camouflaged, and probably giving off hecht radiation."

"Is that dangerous to people?"

"No, but it'll make them easy to find. Tell them to call us when they get it."

"Why?" Mickey demanded, feeling quite frantic now.

"I'm going to drop it on their heads," she said with a wicked little smile.

* * *

As good as her word, Rose, with Tosh, Owen, and Greg led the hunters on a merry chase all through Cardiff. Mickey stayed behind with Gwen and Ianto to rig up whatever she had planned at the Rift. They were following her instructions to the letter, not sure what exactly they were doing, but doing it anyway.

"What'd she say this was?" Gwen asked, flipping her raven hair out of her face and studying Mickey with concern.

"Called it a super magnet. Said it would draw the aliens back through the Rift, since she thinks that's where they came out."

"And you and I have to stay behind because why? She knows I prefer to be involved."

"She said you were in danger. And apparently, I'm her companion, now, so that means I get to follow her weird instructions and try to figure out what she's up to with half a clue and no time to figure it out in."

"Mickey, that's got to be the weirdest thing you've ever said."

Mickey snorted. "Well, she hasn't called me an idiot, or Rickey yet, so all I have to say is it's better than being the tin dog."

Gwen looked at him incredulously. "I take it back," she said. "_That's_ the weirdest thing you've ever said."

* * *

"Rose, we found it!" Jake's voice exclaimed over the phone. "Can't even see the f-ing thing unless you're standing on top of it, though, so we can't find the entrance."

"Brilliant! Find the exact center, half way along and halfway up the right hand side, and shoot it."

Over the phone she heard Jake unload his service weapon the fast way. "Got it! Rose, there's a door!"

"Good, go inside, and tap the buttons where I tell you."

* * *

"We've caught you now, Rose Tyler," said the Navarad in amused, benign tones. "We expected to chase you all through time and space, yet you stayed here, and that was foolish. How does it feel to survive your race and die on an uncharted backwater?"

"Not as bad as you're going to feel if you don't let me go," she explained. "This is your last chance. Step back and get away."

"We've caught you, and we're going to mount you on a pedestal," the Navarad replied, utterly unconcerned for her warning. "I think we'll do an open chest display, so everyone can see what you were."

Mickey, crouched on the ground a few feet away, sprang to sudden life and shot forward, a furious roar on his lips and his pistol in his hand. "No, Mickey!" Rose shouted as he ran toward her, to thrust his body between her and the Hunter. "Get back, where you're safe."

"Not a chance," he said fiercely. Behind his back, he passed her the device he and Gwen had constructed. "I'll be your companion, if you want, Rose, but you know what that means better than I do."

She nodded sadly and caught him tightly to her, her arm up over his shoulder and her hand on his chest, covering the furious pounding of his single heart. She raised the device in her free hand over his shoulder and a beam of light shot out of it at the Hunters.

Their spaceship materialized ten feet above them and plummeted to the ground. Rose shoved Mickey down and rolled with him across the lawn, away from the Navarads who stood there in bald shock. It was all too fast for even the Hunters' reflexes, and the ship landed, crushing them. Then, there was a god-awful, shattering noise and the ship and all trace that it had ever been there vanished in a swirl of white light.

And Mickey Smith stood on the clear, green lawn and held onto Rose Tyler while she cried like her heart was breaking.

* * *

Later that evening, she took him out to dinner at the most expensive restaurant she could find. After dinner, they went back to his flat, Rose seeming utterly preoccupied, Mickey completely taken with concern for her.

"I'm changing," she told him. "It will be complete, soon, I'll be different." She laughed then. "But I'll still be so human," she announced proudly, "so very human."

"But what will you be, besides human?"

"Different," she assured him, softly, and then moved in close and kissed him, tenderly.

He let this carry on for a minute and then pushed her back. "Rose…" he started.

"No, Mickey, this is important. Because pretty soon, I'll be too stupid to say this, and too smart to let on. I love you, Mickey Smith, always have, since the days we used to fall over and skin our knees and bleed on each other back at Powell Estates."

"But you don't love me like you love him."

"No, you're right, I don't," she replied sadly. "But that doesn't mean I ever loved him more or less, just different. You don't quantify love – it is, or it isn't, it doesn't have a number value. I love him _better_ than I love you, because it was what I was born to do. For that, I'm sorry. Because you deserve the very best in life, Mickey Smith, and only the very, very best love you can find."

"I found that already," he told her, his heart in his eyes. Then he leaned in close and kissed her, kissed her like his life depended on it, like the very air would leave them if he stopped. And she kissed him back, savoring the kiss like the last drink of water in the desert, knowing full well that it would be the last kiss they ever shared.

That night, she slept in his bed with him, for the first time in ages and the last time in their lives.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Wednesday

On Wednesday morning, when Mickey Smith woke, it was to the sound of Rose Tyler, singing in his kitchen. He had never heard the language she was using, but it was elegant, sophisticated and precise. It was also heart-rendingly beautiful.

He walked in after her and greeted her, not with the kiss he wanted, but with a warm, tender hug. She laughed, that sweet, fairy twinkle that warmed him right to the soul. Then she handed him a full English breakfast and turned to the table, carrying a pot of tea. He reached behind him on the counter and picked up her plate as well, and carried them both to the table, bemused.

"How long have you been up?"

"Long enough," she told him, a lonely, distant, sad look in her eyes.

They ate their breakfast and talked about other things, things they never used to talk about. Mickey wondered aloud how old friends were getting on without them in the Universe next door, and Rose made jokes about the people they'd met who were similar but oh so different.

"I mean, look at Sarah Jane," she giggled.

Mickey roared with laughter over this one. They had met her, once, while chasing an alien through a feminist convention. In their home Universe, she was simple Sarah Jane, always exploring and ever waiting. In this Universe, she had never had anything to wait for, so she was the powerful senior editor of a world class feminist magazine and, to their great amusement, an avowed lesbian, partnered to a pretty little Australian flight attendant named Tegan.

When they finished, though, they put the past away and everything went quiet. "Well?" Mickey asked.

"It's time. We need to get together. You, me, Jake, Mum, and Pete. At the house, I think, because Mum's going to have a bad enough night as it is."

* * *

Pete was waiting for them when they arrived, having set everything up in the parlor and chased away the staff for the day. "Your mother needs her rest, Rose, but I agree it's important to talk, because there's something you need to know. The blood tests they ran came back completely inscrutable. Your biochemistry has gone completely off the charts. And I don't have to tell you what the worry is doing to Jacks." 

Rose laughed and hugged her mother close, then patted her distended belly where her baby sister waited just a little longer. "I have to tell you something important, because you need to understand what's happening to me. I love you all, even the baby, and you're my family."

Jake shook his head. "I work for you, I thought," he said with a grin.

Rose smiled back at him. "You're family, Jake, trust me."

Then she sat down, holding her mother's hand, and willing Jackie's unnatural calm that had continued throughout her pregnancy to make it a few more hours. "I'll try to make it quick, because you both need your rest – you aren't going to be getting any after today for a long time to come." And she smirked at them gleefully as Jackie shook her head.

"That's going to take some getting used to, that is," Jackie said with a sigh. "You can see the future now, or something, I suppose? I just felt the first contraction when you got here."

"Something like that, yes," Rose said.

"What did he do to you?" Jackie asked, sounding resigned now, instead of furious.

"It's like I told you before. I did it to myself. I didn't know what I meant before, though. I've been changing the whole time – Mickey got it exactly right – it began when I looked into the TARDIS. I did something I shouldn't have done, and I created a causal nexus."

"Causal whatsits?" asked Mickey, while Pete looked at her through squinted eyes, calculating, his brilliant mind racing along at light speed beyond what Mickey or even Jake could come up with.

"She did something to the law of cause and effect," Pete said, as she looked at him, her eyebrow raised, waiting for his answer.

"Right. Cause comes before effect most of the time. But I looked into the Untempered Schism, I absorbed the Time Vortex, and every bit of me existed at every moment in the Universe for a few minutes. And the heart of the TARDIS effectively 'grants wishes'. I made a wish, and that wish effected things so that things happened out of order."

"This is way over my head," Jackie confessed.

Rose nodded, kindly, and tightened her grip on her mother's hand. "The Universe requires Time Lords. Every Universe that exists has to have them, just like it has to have stars and empty space and life. Without them, the Universe dies. But this Universe exists without them. They died here before even the Doctor was born, in a war of their own making. But the Universe can't not have them."

"Okay," said Mickey, "I'm with you so far."

"Is that what the Doctor is?" asked Jake.

"I wished that I could save the Doctor, I wished that I could be like him so that I could be with him forever. And ever so slowly, I started to change. His TARDIS held off the change for a little while, she has that much power and much, much more."

"But what does that mean?" Jackie demanded. "You're becoming him or something?"

Rose smiled. "No, I'm turning into me," she said kindly. "The new and improved Rose Tyler."

Mickey sighed. "Now with cryptic phrases," he finished for her, in his best BBC announcer's voice.

"Two for one special," continued Jake. "Get the new and improved Rose and we'll throw in space alien behavior absolutely free."

Rose nodded. "Yep," she said and, just because she felt like it, popped the p. "Still available with cheesy smile and mum who slaps!"

Jackie did indeed deliver a whack to the back of her head. "Are you going to leave us then?" Jackie asked after a few minutes.

"No," she said, definitively. "You're my family. I'll be here, I'll love you, I'll look after you, all of you. It takes two hundred years to grow a TARDIS and apparently, what changed me is also causing the TARDIS key to grow a new TARDIS."

"But how do you know so much now?" Pete asked. "I've seen you do things, say things, that you never could have done, never would have known."

"I looked into the TARDIS and the TARDIS looked into me," she quoted while her mother shivered and the others looked at her, expressions ranging from morose to glum. "I'll become what he is. That's what the causal nexus did. I was drawn into this Universe because there has to be a Time Lord here and there wasn't until he came. He didn't know, I didn't know, but now I do. I had to come here because this Universe had to have a Time Lord, and it had to have a Time Lord because I came. Hard to explain, really."

Pete nodded, though, as close to understanding as any of them could be.

"But you'll be alone, Sweetheart," Jackie said. "Can't you stop it? We'll be gone, and you'll go on alone, forever."

"I know, Mum." She brushed a tear away from her cheek, and forced yet another smile. "I can't change it, and I wouldn't if I could. This Universe does need someone – it needs a Doctor, but it can't have him. So it will have to settle for me, instead. Being alone is, in a way, part and parcel, but it's also my punishment, for what I did to him, and what I did to Captain Jack."

Mickey, who had met Jack once, frowned. "What's Jack got to do with all this?"

"I saved his life," she said, her voice trembling.

"That's a good thing, though," protested Jackie.

"Not that way." She buried her face in her hands. "That Universe had a major anomaly in it, now, a single, fixed point in the middle of everything that is born and lives and dies. And that's Jack. I didn't just save his life once, you see." She looked at all of them and drew in a deep, shaky breath, as if begging them to forgive her for a crime they couldn't even comprehend. "I saved it forever."

"But to save a life…" Jackie said.

"It's the sort of thing that can never go unpunished, Mum. I condemned him to a living hell of endlessness. It hurt both of them, so very much, and I didn't even know. Jack wouldn't even blame me, he's not like that. The Doctor probably considers it singularly appropriate. But that sort of act demands payment in kind."

They didn't understand, she realized that almost immediately, so she waited for the next question. It came from Pete, of course, who looked shocked and shaken by all of this. "So what will you do?"

"I'll live out my life, however long it is. I'll grow old, eventually, and then I'll die. And it will happen, again and again, twelve times. Worlds will turn under my feet and I'll feel them. People will walk by and I'll see them. Eternity will pass and I'll live it. Worlds will begin and end, and I'll make them. That'll be my job, my task, my responsibility. But for now and for the rest of your lives, I'll still be Rose Tyler, former shop-girl, Torchwood employee, and Defender of the Earth. I'll do things that confuse you and make you angry, but I would have done that anyway. And I'll take your hand, and tell you to run, and we'll run, for as long as you can, together."

Then she stood up and she left the room, to let them talk about it amongst themselves. At the door, she stopped. "Pete, you'd better have her bag packed. I'll be back with the car in three hours and we'll be ready to go."

* * *

Victoria Rose Tyler was born at 11:45 pm at the Torchwood Infirmary on that Wednesday night. She was blonde haired and had a happy dimpled smile and brown eyes that could steal the world. Her sister Rose Marion Tyler held the baby for the first minute of her life, then stepped away into another room, where it was quiet, and collapsed. 

At midnight, Mickey found her there. He wondered if she had lied to them, if she had known she was dying of something alien and cureless and utterly unstoppable. She would not have done it to protect him or Pete, but to protect Jackie and ensure the safety of the baby, she would have lied to her very last breath.

He reached out and took her hand, and found it cooler than living, human warmth, but not cold. A quick shift to touch her wrist found her pulse, but the single beat he expected was instead a twinned throb against his fingertips. In almost the same instant that Victoria Tyler was born into the human race, her sister had left humanity behind. She was changed, then, and lost to them forever, but wonderfully, terribly alive.

She was like the Doctor, now, then, and might as well be with him as she was as distant from their human lives as the stars she would now inhabit.. Mickey found himself laughing and crying at the same time, and didn't know which emotion hurt more.

* * *

A new born Time Lord walked the winds of Time in her dreams, and touched the beginning and ending of things. She saw again in exquisite detail every moment she ever spent with the man she loved more than her own life, including some moments she never knew she'd been with him. She saw now what she could never have seen as that precious, innocent girl he loved so dearly in return. 

As a human being, she could never have stayed with him. As a Time Lord, she could never have been with him. In this Universe or in any other, she could never, ever have him. But here, in her new home, she could be as close to him as she would ever have been. Here, there was no Doctor, and she could never touch him. But there was _something._


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8: Thursday, Again

On Thursday afternoon, Rose Tyler and Mickey Smith were again kidnapped by aliens, these some bright pink serpentine creatures calling themselves the S'tss. As they waited in their bare prison cell, Rose grinned at Mickey in complete humor. "It's almost like I spend more time with aliens now than I did wandering around on every world I ever went to."

"More prisons, too," Mickey replied, almost amused. "Kinda silly, if you think about it."

"We'll be fine, Mickey, just let my brilliant mind get to work."

"Yeah, and while you're doing that, see if you can't figure out what this lot want, ok?"

They escaped from the cell in short order and made their way to the bridge of the ship, Rose holding a guard captive with her sonic screwdriver.

"Who are you?" the aliens demanded, befuddled when she let her captive go into the arms of his fellows.

With love in her eyes and no surprise at herself, she opened her mouth and said, "I'm the Doctor."

"Doctor who?" the S'tss demanded.

Mickey laughed while she winked at him. "Just the Doctor," she replied, took her companion's hand, and saved the world.

_**

* * *

Author's Note:**_

_This started out with a simple, good idea, and evolved into some ways I wasn't expecting and some ways I wasn't surprised about. I hope no one thinks Rose decided to lie down and die once she lost him – she's better than that, and she'd already seen what it did to one girl who completely lost everything she valued about herself, at all, becoming someone her 20-year-old self would never have even tolerated, never mind liked. _

_I always felt bad for Sarah Jane: she was one-of-a-kind and she lost every single ounce of that one-of-a-kindness over the course of her time spent with the Doctor. It was so SAD. Love should change you. It should make you learn and grow and become. It should make you yourself, but more. It should never make you less than you are. If any of you are mad at me about what I did to her in this world, think about what she did to herself in the Doctor's world. Then email me, and we'll talk about it._

_There is one more chapter, entitled "Aftermath" in which the future is known in bits. Tell me what you'd like to see the resolution of and I'll include it in that chapter. And review, let me know what you liked, what you didn't, what I can clear up, and whether you still like me._

_Also, last thing. The astrophysics Rose spouted are mine and bloody obvious to me. The programs Rastajn was talking about can be seen frequently on several science channels. I can't do the math so I can't correct them, but if you happen to know any astrophysicists, or are one, feel free to mention it. Credit where it's due is required, of course. If you need more, email._

_All my best,_

_-Jessa L'Rynn ___


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9: Aftermath

She read every story she could get her hands on to the baby as she grew into a little girl. The only one she wouldn't touch was Peter Pan.

* * *

Five years later, Mickey Smith walked into a hospital to check out a small disturbance and met a beautiful young doctor with stars in her eyes and a cell-phone practically glued to her left hand. When he introduced himself as Mr. Smith, she was delighted. A few months later, he introduced her to his grandmother, then Pete, Jackie, and Victoria, then Jake, and finally Rose. 

"You've caught a real winner," Rose told him from her bar stool in the pub where they usually met for drinks. "Be good to her." Then she walked over and sat down at their table. "Nice to meet you, Martha Jones," she said. "I'm the Doctor."

* * *

The lullabies Rose sang were alien and beautiful. Victoria heard them. Their younger brother John-Michael heard them. Mickey and Martha's daughter heard them. All the children born to Torchwood families for twenty-five years heard them. But no one understood them, and only Jackie Tyler ever saw the gut-wrenching pain in the eyes of the beautiful singer.

* * *

By the time Victoria was six, Rose had taught her to say "We are not amused" any time she was angry. It was Rose's idea of adorable. Even if it annoyed Jackie, it made Pete laugh every single time.

* * *

A young woman called Donna Noble caught Jake's fancy, much to Rose's complete amusement. She spent days and days teasing him that Donna was rather like her own mum. Still, he loved the valkyrie to pieces so Rose did everything she could for them, even going so far as to sort out all the baby shower things for them herself when Donna went into premature labor.

* * *

Six months after Mickey married, she finally sat down and read Peter Pan to her young siblings. If anyone heard her stumble over the phrase "Much older than twenty", they never mentioned it.

* * *

The tiny TARDIS took on the shape of a miniature Police Box one Thursday morning when Victoria was 16. Rose, who finally looked more like Victoria's sister than her mother, brought her over to her office to meet the machine and they sat and listened to it sing alien lullabies for hours.

* * *

If anyone noticed the brown-eyed blonde standing on the outskirts of Abigail Smith's funeral service, they didn't stop to speak to her. She didn't expect them to, as they hardly knew her, except in passing, Mrs. Smith's strange friend whose grandmother had supposedly known Abigail's grandmother, Victoria. When the service ended, she walked away. She had buried them all, even Victoria's last grand child, and done her service to her family. 

The Doctor, as she was almost exclusively known these days, crossed the hillside and entered a strange, blue box. It was singing, not that anyone now living was competent to hear it, except the young Time Lady herself, who had outlived everyone she knew, and was ever so much older than twenty.

"So," she asked the ship, "are you sure this will work?"

The exquisite, golden, roundelled walls flashed once in agreement.

"All right then. It's your maiden voyage. We'll go wherever you like." And she touched the console, and raced around it, pushing buttons and nudging levers. And then, for the first time in more than two hundred years, an unearthly, other-worldly sound echoed through London and the cosmos itself. A new born TARDIS and a young Time Lord stepped into the Vortex together.

* * *

The young man staring at the strange blue box had an elegant, almost regal bearing. He was wearing a military uniform, however, and standing in shock in the middle of a trap. A small, feminine hand reached out and yanked him inside. 

"It's bigger on the inside," he stammered in complete astonishment.

"Yeah," she agreed in a strange, Londonish accent. "What'd you expect, smaller? Who are you, anyway?"

"Colonel Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stuart," he said, still in awe of his surroundings.

"And I'm the Doctor," she replied.

"Doctor who?" he asked, as though he were reading from cue cards.

"Just the Doctor," she replied, with an impish grin, her tongue poking through her teeth, She laughed a merry twinkle and offered him her hand. "We'll be good friends, Lethbridge-Stuart, just you wait."

* * *

_A/N: Thank you all for the reviews. I may write more for my "Rose-as-Doctor-verse" but probably not. If you want to borrow the concept, let me know so I can read your story._

_For those of you following my updates, the next chapter of Kallisti will be up soon. I'll also be posting a two shot in a world where there are no parallel Universes and a matched pair of fictions entitled "How He Loved Her" & "When You're Older", which are going to be about 10 matching chapters each._


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